This Day in 1913 in The Record: Feb. 24, 1913

Monday, Feb. 24, 1913. "Mothers and fathers with children in public schools of New York are paying more money for text books, and considerably in advance of what they should," The Record reports today, "because the state educational department has not taken steps to adopt a uniform system."

Governor William Sulzer has appointed a committee to investigate the department of education. One of the biggest complaints against the department is its failure to adopt a statewide uniform system for selecting textbooks for public schools. Textbook selection is currently decided at the local level. Critics allege that control really rests with a "book trust" of publishers who resort to "graft" when dealing with local school commissioners.

Our paper's Albany correspondent comments today on the grilling to which the Sulzer committee subjected assistant state education commissioner Thomas E. Finegan last week. Finegan appeared before the committee in place of commissioner Andrew S. Draper, who is ill.

"The assistant commissioner was permitted to absorb some knowledge the committee had obtained as to complaints which it had gathered, one of which sought relief from 'graft that should not be tolerated,'" our reporter writes, "This was in reference to the non-uniformity of text books. Mr. Finegan, though, had never heard of a grievance of this character, not one, and had any been filed in the department they would have been given attention."

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Commissioner Delaney of the committee mocks Finegan's ignorance. "We must be more efficient than you are," he says, "for while you have never in all your identity with this department received once complaint, we have received more than fifty in three weeks."

Legislators have had a hard time advancing a uniform textbook system. "There is but one conclusion," our writer argues, "and that is the book trust is powerful enough to block any forward movement, not only in this state, but practically throughout the Union. This is the belief of every man, woman and child who ever gave the subject a moment's thought."

A committee member describes the book trust as "like unto a disease undermining the foundation under which the greatest institutions of the state were built, the schools."

The education department itself may prove a major obstacle to reform. "It has been classed either rightfully or wrongfully as a political society, not a Republican or Democratic organization, perhaps, but as a machine formed to protect itself against all comers, to rule with an iron hand and to accept no suggestion or advice from without the province of 'the czar' or the four walls of the building in which the department is elaborately established," our reporter writes.